Hacker News: rvanlaar

New comment by rvanlaar in "Evolving Threat: http2shell is an RCE in Node, Python, and more"

rvanlaar — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:28:44 +0000

It looks like brotli <= 1.2.0 is vulnerable.

The python package has already been updated to 1.2.1. https://pypi.org/project/brotli/1.2.1/

New comment by rvanlaar in "See a Fish? Ring the Bell"

rvanlaar — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 22:07:17 +0000

Never expected this from my hometown to hit hackernews.

For some context, here's the lock in streetview: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0974077,5.1152216,3a,75y,277...

New comment by rvanlaar in "Nintendo Switch Emulator: Progress Report December 2023"

rvanlaar — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 15:06:53 +0000

If it can be performant depends on the tasks it need to full fill.

The Switch uses the X1. A chip from 2015. The CPU has a clock rate of 1GZ, the GPU 307-768 MHz. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch#Technical_spec...

New comment by rvanlaar in "The weirdest bug I've seen yet"

rvanlaar — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 21:13:20 +0000

Ah, Chrome and slow spinners.

Python tests were taking ages on VSCode due to an SVG spinner:

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=103626...

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/9216

New comment by rvanlaar in "Progress on No-GIL CPython"

rvanlaar — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 21:20:39 +0000

There's a GIL presentation [1] from 2010 which shows Python 3.2 on a 1 CPU machine was faster than on a dual core.

In all, there might be reason to expect GILless python to be faster single core in certain scenario's.

[1] https://youtu.be/Obt-vMVdM8s?t=2047

New comment by rvanlaar in "Some reasons to avoid Cython"

rvanlaar — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 15:05:29 +0000

I'm working on a project to revive old QTVR movies[1].

After writing a couple of python decoders [2] for movie encodings from the 90's it got old quickly.

As luck would have it, FFmpeg has support for almost all video encodings under the sun. For my usecase I wanted to send one frame per time to FFmpeg to decode.

Luckily I found PyAV[3]. It's a Cython project which binds to FFmpeg.

Which brings me to the article. It reads more like a C bad, rust good. Cythons tag line is: 'Cython gives you the combined power of Python and C`

Just wanting speed and less memory bugs, then rust will fare better. If you want to have the combined power of Python and C then Cython is pretty cool.

[1] https://github.com/rvanlaar/QTVR [2] https://github.com/rvanlaar/QTVR/tree/master/qtvr/decoders [3] https://github.com/PyAV-Org/PyAV

New comment by rvanlaar in "Dutch rules will soon prevent schoolchildren from having a phone in classroom"

rvanlaar — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 13:45:43 +0000

Here's Arjen Lubach, the Dutch Jon Stewart, about phones in classrooms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cclEuSxFd_M

Note: The autogenerated (english) subtitles are a pretty decent.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Analyzing multi-gigabyte JSON files locally"

rvanlaar — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 22:00:31 +0000

Recently had 28GB json of IOT data with no guarantees on the data structure inside.

Used simdjson [1] together with python bindings [2]. Achieved massive speedups for analyzing the data. Before it was in the order of minutes, then it became fast enough to not leave my desk. Reading from disk became the bottleneck, not cpu power and memory.

[1] https://github.com/simdjson/simdjson [2] https://pysimdjson.tkte.ch/

New comment by rvanlaar in "SQL should be the default choice for data transformation logic"

rvanlaar — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 21:25:09 +0000

While I agree with the sentiment, in practice I haven't seen it go over well. I find the tooling around SQL to be severely lacking.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2022)"

rvanlaar — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:33:23 +0000

SEEKING WORK | Europe | Remote preferred ========================================

Get projects unstuck

Roland van Laar is an independent IT consultant who helps businesses use IT. Be it unstucking a project or building software and bringing ideas into reality. He started 16 years ago in IT and has since gotten experience in various roles such as, sysadmin, devops, teaching, coder, project lead, architect and advisor. Now he's working on helping companies by focusing on process.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle"

rvanlaar — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 10:12:50 +0000

Thanks for sharing. That was a fun game.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?"

rvanlaar — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 09:10:18 +0000

Thanks for the responses, much appreciated.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?"

rvanlaar — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 08:40:11 +0000

A top developer leaving also functions as a signal to others in the company.

I once left a company quickly after a senior leader had left. That proved to be a good move since the company was going under and sold a few months after.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?"

rvanlaar — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 07:41:38 +0000

What an interesting story. It made me look up how medal of honor started.

Could you clarify a few things? I don't think the story adds up.

Wikipedia has the followin information. Medal of Honor was made by DreamWorks interactive. [..] Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Spielberg founded DreamWorks Interactive in 1995. [1] And: Danger Close Games (formerly DreamWorks Interactive LLC and EA Los Angeles) was an American video game developer based in Los Angeles. [2]

This doesn't sound like 'a small game studio in Oklahoma'.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor_(1999_video_gam...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Close_Games

Edit: It seems you were talking about the acclaimed: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.

Made by: 2015, inc[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Games

Edit 2: Spelling

New comment by rvanlaar in "Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?"

rvanlaar — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 20:25:14 +0000

Secret History of silicon valley, more a presentation. It gave insight into the collaboration of astrophysics and the military.

Shoah: An documentary about the holocaust 11 hours long, but without any archive footage. The maker interviews all kinds of people. Farmers living next to train emplacements used, train drivers, perpetrators and more.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis"

rvanlaar — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 11:27:50 +0000

I've read the paper. What got my senses tingling, is that: - there has been no investigation on which strains were in the lab - if the data is to be trusted, given it's in China.

Till those questions have been answered I remain skeptical about the origin.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Show HN: Zelda Breath of The Wild Street View"

rvanlaar — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 20:24:18 +0000

This brings back nice memories.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Data shows that the EU's CSAM scanning will not have the intended effect"

rvanlaar — Tue, 24 May 2022 09:53:31 +0000

It will catch random webmasters.

In short, Dutch hoster TransIP had to pause their scanning service. They got hashes that included default images from WordPress.

"Waar het misging, is volgens TransIP-woordvoerder Marco Edelman dat per ongeluk hashes van standaardafbeeldingen van WordPress-installaties en plug-ins zijn toegevoegd." [1] https://tweakers.net/nieuws/182766/transip-pauzeert-hashchec...

New comment by rvanlaar in "Netflix hints at password sharing crackdown as subscribers fall"

rvanlaar — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 11:46:33 +0000

Re: Altered Carbon. How come the first season was awesome and got me to read the books. The second season was so bad I stopped watching it after a few episodes.

And yes, I just checked and I had the Premium plan. Just downgraded to standard.

Indeed, well done netflix.

New comment by rvanlaar in "Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?"

rvanlaar — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 11:10:09 +0000

X1 owner checking in. I use it and I'm happy with it. It hit the sweet spot when I bought it a couple of years ago.

I don't recommend it for the given price point. I included all extra options such as insurance and the extra disk space.

I found it isn't fast enough in general usage. Had problems running a serverless javascript project. External monitors with scaling will bring the iGPU to its knees. The display itself is too small to effectively program on it, and the CPU is not powerful enough to run a multitude of unittests or compile more complicated programs on.

I use my X1 with an eGPU and two 4K monitors. Webdevelopment happens in VSCode with heavy usage of the VSCode remote docker plugin. This enables me to run unittests and development tasks on a beefy PC.

Taken all together this raises the price quite a bit.